The Princess and the Tower

[sorcerous]

WHO Anyone who wants to rescue Sansa! Also Loki and Sansa.
WHAT Rescuing Sansa from the Ice Tower
WHERE Upstream on the river.
WHEN This IC day/the next IC day
NOTES I'll be setting up subthreads for the ice maze, the guardians outside the tower, and the stairs inside the tower. The group will start out all together in the ice maze and then be separated into two, I believe. The groups are (correct me if I'm wrong) Cho, Sif and Faolan, and Giles, Helios, Kay and Bakura. It's not too late to participate! If you would like to, hit up the plurk linked in the below paragraph.

The general sequence of events can pretty much be assumed to be: they get through the ice maze, they get through the guardians, they get up the stairs. If anyone would in particular like your group to be the winner, that's cool with me, go ahead and jump in here, otherwise it'll just be whoever manages to RP to that part first.

Comments

[sorcerous]

"She loves you, I think." Not as a lover, of course, nor as an equal, a brother-in-arms. No, but Sif is protective of the girl, and Loki preyed on that, when he made his choice.

[isinganyway]

"She honors me, if that is true." The ice muffles her already-quiet voice. A shiver overtakes her; she pulls her cloak tighter around her shoulders, and Lady, sensing Sansa's disquiet, presses against her for warmth and support.

[sorcerous]

"Is it an honor?" he asks her. "She is honorable, yes, but she is violent where a light touch is needed. She is a sword without guidance or restraint. And you are just a child." A pause, then, softer: "A wounded child."

[isinganyway]

She does not deny being wounded; for a girl like Sansa, her pain is as much a part of her armor as her courtesy, though she pretends not to be. Pain keeps others from getting too close to hurt you. And Sif has gotten past that armor. Past the courtesy and cold, careful distance to a girl with auburn hair and shy smiles. She doesn't know what a liar I am.

"The world is a violent place, but I do not think Lady Sif would hurt an innocent." A protest, perhaps, but not spoken like one. Lady licks Sansa's hand, delicately, and Sansa smiles at the affection.

[sorcerous]

"She hurt me."

When he was an innocent. She hadn't meant to, of course, hadn't even seen the effect of her words and her scorn. It was just another slight; it was just another reason the sun shone on Thor and his shadow left Loki cold.

He shouldn't have said anything.

"I would wish you more luck than I had, but there is no use wishing a glass a long life once it has already shattered, is there?"

[isinganyway]

She wants to ask: what is between you, and why do you speak of her in such contrasting ways? Is that why you cut her hair, or did she hurt you when you cut it? Many questions and more, but.

But.

Sansa holds her tongue. One thing she does know is that good people do bad things, and bad people do worse things. Some people defy labels such as "good" and "bad" altogether. Someday Sif will likely hurt Sansa as well, but until then she will cling to this cherished regard. It makes her feel braver.

"You seem so certain she will not understand."

[sorcerous]

"She is born of a people made to kill," says Loki. "Made to favor honor over truth, to stand golden and shining, satisfied only when their enemies freeze to the bone, bleed out and die in dirty snow."

He doesn't care, of course. The Frost Giants may bleed and die. He is not one of them, but he is not Aesir, either.

Something out the window catches his eye; his fingers curl, and ice shivers in the air, momentarily, as he shifts the maze.

[isinganyway]

He describes Westeros and its people, the lords and ladies, men, women, and babes of the Seven Kingdoms. The false trappings of honor and glory and the bloody game of thrones. Sansa is born of such people, and by Loki's reckoning this makes her no better than Sif.

"Are they not your people as well, my prince?"

[sorcerous]

"Not by blood." And not by anything else, either. He had never been one of them.

[isinganyway]

Her brow draws together in puzzlement. "But you are a prince. It is your kingdom."

[sorcerous]

"A Foundling Prince." What use is it keeping a secret? "I was born of monsters, savage and low, with no honor. Nothing but raw, stark truth." He glances to her. "They call us Frost Giants."

[isinganyway]

But you do not look giant, she almost says, biting back the words before they can spill from her tongue.

"The ice flower," she whispers as realization strikes her. The smell of cold water and crisp air.

[sorcerous]

"A power that blooms in my very blood." As it grew the tower around them, as it grew the maze and the ice guardians, below.

[isinganyway]

Comprehension grows, stretches, deepens. Dress warmly, he had told her. Cold seeps from the floor through her boots to curl like sharp fingers around her toes. "You made this?" Awe and wonder and a thread of fear in her voice.

[sorcerous]

He'd assumed she'd concluded that already -- though his surprise vanishes in a curl of satisfaction, at her awe, at her shock.

"From the river," he tells her. "I raised the water as high as it would go." It took much of his strength.

[isinganyway]

What little Sansa knows of magic comes from grand tales and fanciful songs. Before Schwanheim, she had not thought such things real, not since she was a young and wide-eyed innocent.

If magic can be real, can the rest of the songs? --But no. If magic is real it must be as harsh and cruel as the rest of the world.

"Where I am from, in the land of Westeros," she says, and her words are measured, careful, each tidbit of knowledge carefully thought-out before she eases them past her guard, "we have a Wall that marks the northernmost reaches of our Kingdoms. It rises near a thousand feet into the sky and stretches from the eastern shores to the west. They say it was fashioned with magic thousands of years ago."

[sorcerous]

"A thousand feet high?" A raise of his eyebrow. That's very interesting, and quite likely to be magic. "And why would your kingdom build such a wall?" He's very interested.

[isinganyway]

"To keep out what lies beyond it." The way it's spoken, it's clear she knows no more than that. Sansa had never liked the frightening stories.

[sorcerous]

"And what lies beyond?"

So many options, for the truth. Perhaps a king needed something for his subjects to fear. Perhaps there truly are horrors on the other side. Perhaps there once were, and now...

Loki is intrigued.